merydian

Festivids reveals happened recently and I got SO many amazing gifts!! It also gave me an opportunity to actually finish a fanvid for the first time in ages and the whole experience made me get reflective about my experiences with vidding communities and my vidding history, etc. Sooooo first I'm gonna rec some vids and then at the bottom ramble for a million words or so.

Check out the full collection here!

I guess I'm going to format individual video recs as "Media that the vid is for | Song and artist | Vidder | Link"
Please heed the warnings in the tags and author's notes of each.

Things I Got
Mercy Point | Made of Stars by Mobius | Vidded by colls | Link
One of my favorite barely known cancelled too soon TV shows very unexpectedly got a fanvid tribute edited together and it is MAGNIFICENT. Definitely check it out if you want to see a very captivating collection of highlights from a space station medical drama.

Sapphire & Steel | Daffodil by Florence + the Machine | Vidded by marah_sarie | Link
This vid is INSANE. The song is perfect for the creepy intense sci-fi vibes of the show and it showcased all the aesthetics and wild moments so well. Crazy timing methods, too.

Lost in Space (2018) | Hold On by Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown | Vidded by colls | Link
SO good at showing why John/Maureen (and Don!) are an incredibly badass team and everything they've risked to keep themselves and their family safe.

Lost in Space (2018) | Bones by Maren Morris & Hozier | Vidded by dirty_diana | Link
Ough this was another John/Maureen vid and it made me so freaking emotional detailing the ups and downs of their journey from start to end and the resilience of their love.

Things I Also Enjoyed
I'm still making my way through the collection so some videos may just have to end up on future rec lists. I actually am unfamiliar with most of the sources below except Murderbot? So I'm not sure how they hit in regards to context but the vibes and styles stuck with me.

Mad Men | Doll House by Melanie Martinez | Vidded by periru3 | Link
I have no idea what Mad Men is about but it seems like this song fit the specific kind of dysfunction being focused on! The scene matching and timing was super captivating.

I Saw the TV Glow | Killing Moon Cover | Vidded by Tafadhali | Link
Oh my god this was so skillfully eerie I felt like I was physically being pulled in. Maybe that's fitting given the source.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves | Campaign Playlist | Vidded by ryfkah | Link
I've never seen a concept like this before and it was executed SO enjoyably!! Please just check it out to see what I mean, especially if you're into D&D so it can resonate even more.

Severance | 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton | Vidded by suzanne_f | Link
I have not yet watched Severance and from what I can gather it is... maybe a more serious show with some deep concepts? So getting an office comedy lens to it is REALLY fun. Impeccable timing, holy shit I could rewatch this all day.

The Spear Cuts Through Water | Dance for the Nations by John Krumm | Vidded by Scribe | Link
Vid for a book!! I have no context but the scenes they pulled together from other sources have such a good consistency that I don't think I would've known it was a book vid if I'd seen it without the details.

Moonlight Fills the Western Tower | Lethal Woman by Dove Cameron | Vidded by AurumCalendula | Link
This is just SO badass and so sapphic!! The editing takes full advantage of the song and it's such an enjoyable watch.

Night Raiders | Darkness Bring the Light | Vidded by ultraviolet_catastrophe | Link
I don't know how to explain the emotions this made me feel but my heart will never be the same and I have got to watch this show.

Blazing Saddles | Tightrope | Vidded by citruses | Link
I cannot get over how fun this is!!! Not a single dull moment. It's one of those vids I'd watch when I'm having a bad day to cheer me up because I can't not smile watching it even though I don't know the source.

Enigma | Bury a Friend by Billie Eilish | Vidded by sandalwoodbox | Link
This was SO FREAKY!! Like obviously that song is creepy enough but the editing heightened the creep factor so goddamn skillfully I got chills.

Murderbot | No Choir (Instrumental) by Florence + the Machine | Vidded by mithborien |  Link
I cannot believe the effort that went into in-universe graphics for this book and other creative ways to visualize the series! The whole thing works so freaking well I'm extremely impressed.

Chants of Senaar | Prisencolinensinainciusol, by Adriano Celentano | Vidded by marah_sarie and runjump  | Link
I keep meaning to play this game and I want to a thousand times more now. This is so COOL and I particularly love the effort gone into the title and end cards.The game is about trying to piece together a made up language from context and puzzles iirc so the choice of a song that was made by an Italian singing fake English was fucking fantastic.

M3GAN | Little Chaos by Orla Gartland | Vidded by videobaths | Link
I don't think a more perfect song exists for this film and I don't think this could have more perfectly been stitched together.

Thing I Made

Professor Marston & the Wonder Women | If by Janet Jackson | For livrelibre | Link
I had a really fun time getting to rewatch the film and finally make something for it! It's a really special movie to me and I think this is the first time I've vidded such explicit sexual content.

I had so many treats I wanted to make, but alas it seems like everything that could have gone wrong over the past few months did, so I didn't want to push my luck. Just hoping some of those things get requested again next year or in other exchanges.

Things I'm Thinking

I have had a really interesting time seeing how cool the vidding community in the exchange circuit/Dreamwidth is and how much history people seem to have. It kind of makes me sad that I missed out on it for so long! I vidded for a few exchanges years back under a different account, but only participated in Festivids specifically in 2023 as a pinch hitter... so I wasn't really part of the months leading up. I've also deleted so many of my old fanworks it kind of makes me wish I still had that footprint and participation in fandom history, even though it doesn't quite feel like anything I did was noteworthy. I like the clean slate, but... I feel a bit hollow not having the rest attached to me and starting fresh socially as well.

When I was more frequently editing, I really didn't have a community based around editing. I was in fandoms that had people who sometimes appreciated fanvids! But a lot of times it wasn't a very well-liked medium compared to art/fics/gifs, or there weren't a lot of other fans around generally in other fandoms. I haven't had many other vidder friends to learn from and exchange ideas with. I really only got a "community" when I started participating in the vidding side of Twitter from the sidelines, still kind of on my own due to those fandoms being more modern and mine... very much being not. Twitter is where people who also only really posted to Youtube hung out which was me at the time... but I'm really done with how hostile Youtube can be to vidders. I like Dreamwidth and AO3 so much more so the things I make can only be found by people who really want to find them rather than people getting mad at me because the algorithm. I also really never found a strong vidding community on Tumblr and honestly the spirit of fandom on Tumblr has disintegrated so much. It's a big reason I'm trying Dreamwidth out again.

Idk where I'm going with this, I guess I've just realized how lonely and stagnated vidding the way I do has caused me to feel. It's hard to learn from people if I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of who actually... understands vidding? So I really enjoyed getting to do the Festivids Buddies program this year, even though a bunch of IRL emergencies made it hard to be as responsive and communicative as I wish I could have been. And I've really enjoyed seeing how enthusiastic people are in the comments of other people's videos and watch party events.

I've been doing AO3 exchanges on and off for like 6 years now but I still feel a bit out of place as someone whose main fandom experiences were on deviantART and Tumblr rather than Livejournal and here. People have generally been super kind to me, but I still have so much insecurity around the possibility of missing basic etiquette and social cues and so on. I also really have not had the time to keep up with DW events over the past couple years which has taken me out of practice, I guess. So I want to more consistently be on here and participating in fandom in these ways, and the vibes of Festivids really helped solidify that for me even though it is hard to put myself out there. 

Fandom on Tumblr and the remains of Twitter these days really feels like it's more about complaining about other fans than actually rallying around a shared passions. I don't mean to romanticize Dreamwidth or the past. Like... I am well aware of blunter spaces like FFA, lol, and I don't mean to presume after such little time back here that I'm doing things right enough for people to want to be around me. But I just feel more at home here because it reminds me a lot of deviantART in the old days. The focus was so much more on actual creations and supporting one another because we had shared interests. It feels weird to say, because fandom is kind of supposed to be about all that, but it hasn't seemed that way for me for a long time with how Tumblr/Twitter can also encompass so many extremely contentious topics and superiority contests and generally younger users.

So I'm really glad I pushed myself to commit to Festivids this year because it's really reminded me of what kind of fandom experience I actually want to have and that I can more easily get that here. I guess I just wish I was coming into this with more history attached to me so I had more to visibly connect with people on and I also wish I had grounded myself here sooner so I could've been branching out over a longer span. Better late than never, anyway.

(Also sidenote this maybe sounds ironic because I have been bad at replying to comments to actually do the connecting-with-people I'm talking about here... but I accidentally marked my inbox as entirely read so I'm still trying to figure out what I've forgotten and catch up!! Sorry lol I am working on it.) 

ANYWAY I would love to hear if you had any favorite vids from the collection or favorite exchanges or other events you've participated in!!